Regardless of its shortcomings in characterization and storytelling, the film is very beautiful, with the music being especially noteworthy. The score by Anthony Willis is gorgeous and haunting, perfectly complementing various shots of rainy Yorkshire Moors. Charli xcx contributed an album of original songs, such as “House,” which plays at the beginning of the film and was also released as a single in 2025. The song captures the horror and claustrophobia of Catherine’s childhood through eerie instrumental distortion as the lyric “I think I’m gonna die in this house” is repeated, proving that modern spins on classics can work if the emotional core of the story is maintained.Without the unique score capturing the internal turmoil of the characters, though, the movie would feel even more like an exercise in style over substance. This is in part because of the costumes, which are colorful, striking yet not historically accurate at all. A lack of historical accuracy is not inherently problematic if it is clear that is not what the director is attempting to do. Fennell has made that clear by virtue of the costumes being so extravagant, intentionally breaking with the period of the film to convey her unique artistry. Corsets, latex, transparent puffed sleeves and more are paired together in every color of the rainbow. However, Robbie’s acting is not strong enough to match the flashiness of the costumes, and as such she is often overshadowed by her own dresses.Realistically, Emerald Fennell does not owe Emily Brontë that much in terms of beat-for-beat replication. A film is not a novel, and directors should be allowed to imbue a story with their own vision. Plenty of people will no doubt be driven to read the book after watching this movie, and that alone should be seen as a great success. Nevertheless, after those said people read the book, they might come to the conclusion that Fennell’s version pales in comparison. (Grace Traxler)
Coming in, I was unsure about this film, but I left the theater pleasantly surprised. One might think that the film’s deviations from the source material would be detrimental, but Fennell’s decision to shift the focus of the film to just their romance works remarkably well.Through and through, it’s a good adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” that is worth the time and would not have Emily Brontë rolling in her grave. Despite the differences from the book, at its core it is still a movie about the heated obsession of two lovers, and perhaps Brontë would appreciate the focus on emotional intensity over strict fidelity to the plot. (Kahlil Kambui)
As Heathcliff, Elordi is perfectly enticing while also being outwardly savage. From his physical presence to his deep voice, audiences can see why Cathy is so torn. In the final act of the movie, I felt deeply disturbed by the savagery of Heathcliff, kudos to Elordi for his performance there.Robbie, however, delivers the movie’s star performance. She layers Cathy with deliberate cruelty, allowing her to be deeply unlikeable when the story needs it, but in the next moment Robbie softens Cathy into a childlike vulnerability. It’s a performance that captures the instability at the heart of Cathy, making even her most destructive decisions feel believable.This ‘Wuthering Heights’ is designed as spectacle. It invites division rather than agreeance, daring audiences to either surrender to its vision or reject it. Either way, it leaves people wanting to discuss it. While this adaptation may not honour every word of Brontë’s novel, it commits wholeheartedly to its own interpretation.For Brontë purists, that may be unforgivable but for those willing to embrace spectacle over loyalty, it’s a haunting, divisive, and undeniably captivating reimagining. (Emily Chate)
Embodying exactly what a 14-year-old would want to watch on a Friday night, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” excels at playing a mawkish interpretation of the story. By eliminating the guarded nature of Catherine and Healthcliff’s sensuality, there is a yawning gap in the story’s structure.While the film’s boldness and experimentation of style is at the root of its detriment, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is undeniably the most daring imagining of the classic yet. (Molly Tursi)
It’s all about maximalist adolescent interpretations of conflict – what you might call an insight into how the youth might first receive a morally gray story. Those that love the novel are unlikely to be satisfied – as I was never satisfied with any version of “My Cousin Rachel” – but there is rich psychological value in the contrasts Fennell’s version is able to exploit. (Rance Collins)
Instead of a faithful adaptation of the original “Wuthering Heights,” with complex political and social themes, Fennell created a reimagined version that focuses on making the audience feel the effects of being a part of the toxic and intense romance between Catherine and Healthcliff. For those who want a film honoring the original book, Fennell’s adaptation may be something to skip, but for viewers with a love for the passionate, toxic bond between Catherine and Heathcliff… this film is for them. (Maya Peoples)
What, Wuthering Heights with no ghost?All in all, it was febrile, adolescent, overblown and hormonal. The slightly stately, middle-aged Edgar Linton – who should be the same age as Cathy and like the ‘cutest’ member of a non-threatening boyband if you’re going with the adolescent girl’s fantasy angle, was dad-coded when he should have been Mark-Owen-in-the-2000s coded.It’s an excellent concept, to make a Brontë film that is like a piece of juvenilia – dolls in a dolls’ house acting out the story in a febrile, adolescent kind of way. The Brontës are, after all, famous for their juvenilia. They made up whole worlds – Gondal and Angria. Angrier is what I got, as this film trundled on. Because it seems like such a missed opportunity and a waste of some brilliant actors and source material.I laughed and I (almost) cried with laughter but probably not where the director wanted me to. There were a few decent laughs in there, but I suspect most people don’t go to see “Wuthering Heights” for laughs. I was entertained but not, I suspect, in the way I was supposed to be. (Pen Hemingway)
The problem comes with the delusive methods of marketing and the implications of making this movie and calling it “Wuthering Heights.” The movie cover is being put on Emily Brontë’s novel. This act is extremely misleading and disrespectful to the original story.The movie was interesting and held my attention the whole time. The movie is quite worth seeing if you want to be entertained, as long as you go in aware that it is hardly a romance and it is certainly not Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” (Makenna Cable)
These visuals combine with a synth soundtrack by pop sensation Charli XCX, with the opening song “House” featuring John Cale becoming a meme before the film even released. The rest of the tracks are suitable for both a sprint on the moors and a club set. I will give Charli the credit that her music is good, but it often creates more of an ambience than the dialogue does.And because of this, it is safe to say “Wuthering Heights” is a film far more concerned with looking good than being good. (Danielle Bartholet)
In her own messy but literate way, she is exploring human capacity for vulgarity and, in turn, pushing mass audiences to the edge into a sometimes tantalizing, sometimes exhausting zone of entertainment and embarrassment. One might suspect that “crowd-pleasing” would be the greatest insult you could throw at her films; still, audiences seem to, well, lap them up. “Wuthering Heights” may also hit a nerve.Fennell clearly has so many ideas swirling around, which is fitting for a story like “Wuthering Heights.” And yet as a viewing experience, it is an undernourishing feast, neither dangerous nor hot enough. (Lindsey Bahr)
Meanwhile, Fennell’s knowledge as a movie lover is on full display. Bold primary colors pop off the screen with reds, blues and yellows brightly lit amid the dark shadows and dreary black clothes and sets, looking more like the early Technicolor productions from Golden Age Hollywood. Several shots and scenes even recreate famous moments from “Gone With the Wind,” along with references to other famous movie romances such as the 2005 “Pride and Prejudice,” — it being directed by Joe Wright, who has acted in two of his other movies, is no coincidence.With no way for Heathcliff and Cathy to go to therapy in the 1800s, their own untreated mania continues to drive the story in entertaining ways. They say the best revenge is living well, but Heathcliff can only live well by exacting revenge on both the Earnshaws and Linton families, addicted not to loving Cathy but to the pain and pleasure that comes from it. Not a love story — a hate story. (Kellen M. Quigley)
In its praise, the film looks and sounds great. The stunning visuals and beautifully haunting soundtrack by Charli XCX help elevate the twisted whirlwind of emotions between the two lovers.So this, while being a good film, tells a different story from the novel. It would be more fitting to call this 'Catherine' than Wuthering Heights. (Marketing-wise, I get it.) It has the emotional core, the passion and doom between both lovers, but it does not reach the heights of the original material. This film feels like something made for someone who only heard about Wuthering Heights or listened to the Kate Bush song without knowing what it is actually about. It's all wind and no heights. (Khanaphot Saengchai)
Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a glorious, frustrating mess of a film. The sumptuous production captivates with its broad visually romantic strokes, the director putting her distinctive stamp on the Emily Bronte classic in using a vibrant and, at times brooding, aesthetic that’s never less than captivating. And yet, the overall effect is brought low by Fennell’s tendency to go too far, shocking the viewer for shock’s sake with radical additions and alterations that either produce head-scratching moments or feelings of disgust. The end result is a curious disappointment that, ironically, despite its flaws, still proves haunting. (Chuck Koplinski)
If Fennell’s goal with “Wuthering Heights” was to make something beautiful to look at, she succeeded, although after a while, the glittery montages start to feel a little bit masturbatory and the no-nudity sex scenes lose their edge. As the film neared its end, I found myself missing the novel’s whip-smart dialogue and exploration of love beyond just sex.That’s why, at the end of the day, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is the cinematic equivalent of empty calories. If the original novel is a plate of vegetables, the film is a 10-tier cake topped with whipped cream and cherries. It looks beautiful, and the frosting tastes sweet, but cut that cake open and it’s hollow — and now you have a cavity for nothing.When I left the theater after seeing “Wuthering Heights,” I began to wonder if I’d been too harsh on Brontë’s novel. Maybe it deserved three and a half stars. Perhaps even four. That’s what a bad film adaptation will do — it’ll make you realize that yeah, the book was better, even if it wasn’t all that good to begin with. (Elsa Englebert)
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” is for the doom scrollers. Those who take things at face value, those who haven’t held a paperback since high school. It is a film designed for passive consumption, rewarding viewers not for their attention but for their recognition. Sure, the names are the same. The setting is the same. The outline, vaguely, remains intact. But the obsession, the cynicism, the very thing that made “Wuthering Heights,” well, “Wuthering Heights,” is nowhere to be found. (Emma Brandenburg)
The film isn’t that much fun to watch because we’re constantly hoping the romance would kick-in and set our hearts afire, but instead only provides random sparks. (Mike Poulos)
Among those weighing in is Lucasta Miller, a distinguished British author, editor, and critic renowned for her study of the Brontë sisters and her preface to the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights. Having viewed Fennell’s interpretation, Ms Miller remains largely unperturbed by the director’s departures from the source material."It would be meaningless to criticise it for that, just as it would be to criticise a grand opera that plays fast and loose with the plot," Ms Miller stated. "I wasn’t asking for a faithful adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ but whether it works on its own terms. And my sense is that it does." [...]Claire O'Callaghan, a Brontë scholar and senior lecturer at Loughborough University, acknowledged the controversy surrounding casting. "All adaptations choices in terms of casting that don’t always fit character or character descriptions — and this film has certainly been in the spotlight for that reason," she observed. Regarding Robbie’s portrayal, Ms O’Callaghan added, "In terms of Cathy, I was sceptical initially, but having seen the film, it is a good performance, and Margot Robbie really brings out Cathy’s spoiled and selfish nature in ways that other adaptations have paid less attention to." [...]"Some TV versions have attempted to capture the whole book, as have some films, like the 1992 adaptation (starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche)," Ms O’Callaghan explained. "But what film and TV can’t do is maintain the ambiguity in Emily’s novel — the fact that her book is both a tragic love story and a revenge novel and a tragedy. Film and TV tend to focus on one of those for clarity and to focus dramatic tension." [...]Ms Miller likened the film to a "stylised and extravagant" fairy tale, praising Fennell’s "quite insightful" use of such language. Ms O’Callaghan found it "quite Tim Burton-esque in its surreal perspective." Despite its radical departure from the novel, she concluded, "I still found it entertaining even if I’m unsure if I’d claim to like it." (Hillel Italie)
What’s lovable about it is love itself: Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is an unabashedly romantic movie emerging at a time when few such films are being made—at least, for theatrical release and by directors with some artistic cachet. It’s unlikely that many viewers have been fretting about the quality of the adaptation, and I’m in sympathy with such indifference, whether it arises from not having read the novel on which the film is based or just not caring about (literary) fidelity. Rushing to defend a literary source against a supposed cinematic mauling is often little more than an attempt to signal culturedness and education; it’s a matter of judging a movie on the basis of a principle, even a prejudice (and the pride that goes with it), rather than on experience. Yes, I also sometimes compare films with their literary source and criticize them on that basis, but I also know why I do so: not to protect that source (even the worst filmmakers aren’t burning the books, just misunderstanding them) but to complain that the movie isn’t as good as the book itself and to try to figure out why not. [...]What Fennell chiefly adds is something that could hardly have been in a novel published in 1847: sex. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, apparently unconsummated in Brontë, is a hot-blooded affair in the movie. [...]The effect is to demythologize Brontë. If all that impeded the characters’ sex lives in the book were the law and decorum of the author’s day, why not tell something like the truth? If one revisits the past to dispel myths, one worth dispelling is that of a lost era of chastity. But that’s not what Fennell does. Instead of lifting the lid off history and anchoring the adapted parts of “Wuthering Heights” in the specifics of the period when they’re set (roughly from the American Revolution to the French one), Fennell turns history decorative, decks it out in material fantasies so awkward that it’s unclear whether they are deliberate anachronisms or whether they’re just off.The overwhelming silliness of the movie falls short of camp—it’s neither intentionally self-parodic nor exaggeratedly theatrical. On the contrary, even its most outlandish and grotesque inventions are portrayed tastefully, with a sheen of aesthetic refinement that turns the most intensely emotional moments into emblems of emotion. The film’s pictorial expression remains under the top. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” isn’t a bad adaptation, just a banal movie, no worse in what it takes from Brontë than in what it tacks on.Nonetheless, I’m sympathetic to Fennell’s effort, because what she really appears to be adapting is less Brontë than a cinematic genre that has more or less fallen into oblivion: the romantic drama. Though mediocre in itself, “Wuthering Heights” is a kind of placeholder, a symbol of an entire swath of filmmaking that now hardly exists but has been newly brought back to the fore by the ample and ubiquitous archive of streaming. Such movies were long known in Hollywood as “women’s pictures” (even if many of the romantic agonies afflicted the movie’s men, too). The genre’s supreme artists were John M. Stahl (from the silent era through the nineteen-forties) and Douglas Sirk (in the nineteen-fifties), and they were joined by other directors of similar ambition and accomplishment, such as Frank Borzage and George Cukor. Their melodramas of heartbreak and redemption, as in Stahl’s “Only Yesterday” (based on a novella by Stefan Zweig), Sirk’s “All That Heaven Allows,” filled with wild coincidences and fervent confessions, are what could be called tearjerkers. These movies have the extraordinary merit of putting the passions of love and the obstacles to relationships front and center, balancing personal desires and social obligations on an equal footing, and thereby lending bourgeois life the grandeur of tragedy. [...]What Fennell has purchased, so to speak, with the adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” isn’t just a romantic template but a repudiation of any social consciousness: the content-free, history-free, politics-free populism of a movie about nothing but romance. [...]That’s why, for all the artistic inadequacy of “Wuthering Heights,” I’m cheered by the prospect of its box-office success. Profit breeds emulation, and if romance is back other filmmakers are likely to take it on. Maybe they’ll find a way to do so with a more ample, honest context and a more imaginative style to give it form—to help love find its place in the world and vice versa. (Richard Brody)
Overall, I thought the movie was weird, kinda messed up and very aesthetically pleasing.The fan reactions I read after leaving the movie were much more negative. A lot of the discourse focused on the character of Isabella and how the character is treated by Heathcliff. Imagine my surprise when I watched 1992’s Wuthering Heights with Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and discovered that she is treated just as poorly in that adaptation! (Emily Madriga)
PSA: ‘Morally gray’ is not a healthy character trait, and domestic violence is never sexy. There is a fine line between love and obsession, and Wuthering Heights remains firmly in the latter category. The movie is based on Emily Brontë’s classic novel by the same name and is essentially an uncomfortable display of aggression masquerading as a slow burn love story. Timing the release for Valentine’s Day, these filmmakers clearly wanted to produce the romance of the year, but they critically misread the source material and wound up romanticizing infidelity and coercion instead. [...]All that to say, Wuthering Heights was never meant to be the greatest love story of all time. Emily Brontë wrote a complex tale of yearning, yes, but of violence and incest too. The best way to enjoy this movie is to view it as a piece of provocative art rather than a faithful interpretation of classic literature. And if your friends walk away from this movie singing Heathcliff’s praises, please check in on them. (Gia Lish)
Many critics argue the new film trims the novel’s merciless edges. Scenes of coercion, domestic violence and the slow rot of abuse that ripple across generations in the book are, in this rendition, less present or less morally complicated. By making the central pair more conventionally sympathetic and excusing or aestheticizing harm, reviewers contend the adaptation loses the tension that makes the original story both disturbing and unforgettable.Supporters counter that this is a deliberate, interpretive choice: a fantasia that extracts a single emotional register — eroticism and yearning — and amplifies it. Detractors maintain that without the moral ambiguity and savagery Brontë wrote, the story can’t fully be called Wuthering Heights.The release has crystallized a broader question about literary adaptation: how much fidelity to a novel’s darkness is necessary for a film to truthfully carry its name? For now, audiences are sorting themselves along predictable lines — those who are happy to trade some of the book’s discomfort for cinematic immediacy, and those who see that bargain as a betrayal of what made the source material strange and essential. (Riley Calderon)
The two gin monoliths, like so much of the visual design of the film, gave production designer Suzie Davies and her team the chance to reach the apex of a feeling — whether anger, sadness, despair, or desire. Fennell wrote into the script that Earnshaw would meet his end surrounded by mountains of empty bottles, but it was on Davies to translate that into a reality — or at least as much of a reality for the world of the often unreal, dreamlike, and deliberately artificial-looking “Wuthering Heights.”“Oh my God, that was such fun to do!” Davies told IndieWire. “We had a fantastic team of model makers doing all sorts of wonderful things [to make] these giant bottles of booze. I think I’d made it about five-foot high, up to the windows. I thought, ‘That’s a lot of gin.’ We’d been practicing it because, obviously, on a schedule, you can’t just dress those in. They’re actually on a rig, and we wanted to get light behind them so it’s hollow behind. [And] Emerald just said, ‘I think we need more.’” [...]Davies said that the monstrous nature of those sky-high bottle piles is not only a visual match for Earnshaw and the horror of what a drunk he was. It’s also part of the way that the Wuthering Heights house disintegrates into wreck and ruin. “We wanted the omnipresence of nature taking over in all forms. It’s coming from the mountain, it’s coming from all sides, it’s coming from the ground. Everything was just the heaviness and pressure of that building and the uncomfortable nature of what’s going on in that world,” Davies said.By this point in the film, Davies and her team had already done a lot of work, giving the space an emotional trajectory similar to Cathy and Heathcliff’s self-destruction over their feelings for each other. Freed from any sort of period accuracy, Davies tried to start the house in a spartan, memory-like state, as Cathy and Heathcliff would remember it from childhood. “There’s not really an oven. There’s not the usual accoutrements of a kitchen. It’s very bare,” Davies said. “But I love that when Heathcliff and Isabella [Alison Oliver] take over, it’s just layers upon layers of dead animals and food and drink and shapes. It was great to do.”Whether working with the brooding ruin of the Wuthering Heights house or the glossy red corridors in Thrushcross Grange, Davies was guided by the same principles, which Fennell laid out in a phone call to Davies before she sent the production designer the script. “The idea that it was gonna be about a feeling more than anything. It’s like the architecture of feeling that we needed to design, rather than the architecture of the period,” Davies said.“You’re just given this opportunity to safely make crazy decisions,” Davies said. “Although it’s [Emerald’s] story, she’s happy [for everyone to have], and expects everyone to have an opinion, and suggestions. So it’s not, like, ‘Do it this way.’ It’s like, ‘This is what I’m after. What can you do?’ You end up building this visual language that, luckily, over two films [including ‘Saltburn’], I feel like I sort of know her groove,” Davies said. “She pushes me in a direction I would not normally go, and it’s just brilliant for a creative role to have that freedom to just go a little bit crazy.” (Sarah Shachat)
While I waited for the release of Wuthering Heights, I grew curious about the intersection of reading and listening to music at a time when high romance has taken over far more than Emerald Fennell's fancy. I cast my net for other playlists and discussions about music to read by. I found much more than I expected — and frankly, I expected a lot. While my own taste in genre fiction runs more to murder than romance or fantasy, I'm fascinated by the burgeoning subcultures keeping bookstores — and, arguably, publishing — alive through their avid pursuit of all things wild, dark and spicy. What I've learned in my limited research is that these intersecting communities of readers do much more to celebrate their affinities than drop reviews on Goodreads; for many, reading is the heart of a sparkling creative lifestyle. And music is a big part of the cozy bibliophile's world. (Ann Powers)
Wuthering Heights events, watch parties, and meetups have taken over bookish corners across New York, including Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s “book club screenings” inviting “readers, rereaders, and mild obsessives” to debrief and delight in Fennell’s screen candy; Liz’s Book Bar’s Valentine’s Day event featuring special editions of the book and locally-curated florals; and pre-screenings for book influencers hosted by intimacy brands.Possessiveness over the classic—accompanied, inevitably, by the belief that its significance escapes modern readers—has inspired widespread ire over the film. If people are only going to encounter Brontë's work through Fennell’s adaptation, the line of thought goes, then Wuthering Heights deserves something less, well...moist.But what many outside of publishing circles may not realize is that people are reading the book—not just any people, but the sort of people whom classics gatekeepers are most worried about.Book clubs new and old have picked up Brönte (sic)'s Wuthering Heights in recent months. Emily Brontë's sales on Circana BookScan have already surpassed 100,000 units in the first two months of this year, compared to just over 180,000 units in all of 2025. A decent number, like that of romance publisher 831 Stories, operate in the orbit of online romance communities.831's Wuthering Heights group read, which it ran through Substack with online book club Belletrist, launched with the steamy trailer for Fennell's take embedded in-line with the announcement. 831 cofounder Claire Mazur said they knew a lot of people would be talking about the book, and they wanted to make it feel more "manageable" to approach.Their group read broke down the book into weekly chunks and ran a chat for resource-sharing and discussion. Threads on the characters' motivations and marriage—occasionally collapsing into modern romance-trope shorthand—ensued. Mazur said that participants found the book quite sexy, "even without it being really explicit on the page."Though a small number of readers were disparaged to find that sexiness was of the repressed, brooding variety, most approached comparisons to Fennell's interpretation with genuine curiosity or humor. Brontë, for instance, often uses "ejaculate"—meaning a sharp utterance—in her dialogue tags. Near the end of the group read, one subscriber wrote, "I have a feeling this new movie is going to be nothing like the book."After viewing the film, romance author Rebecca F. Kenney, who penned her own "spicy" Brontë spinoff entitled Ruthless Devotion (Sourcebooks Casablanca) in 2025, told PW that it was "wild, vicious, and glorious as the original." Fennell "gave me things I craved that weren't in the original, except maybe hinted at," she added.It may be true that, as St. Martin's editor Vanessa Aguirre told PW, these readers are devouring Wuthering Heights as a "dark romance," which combines Gothic aesthetics, "big feelings," and "angst" to vindicate a morally grey affair as true love. But the words on the page also resist these frameworks. Brontë's story is irrevocably tragic, as Lipton rightly noted.Many other book clubs are using the lustful for the film as an excuse to revisit Brontë's bad romance. The New York Times and New York Public Library both ran Wuthering Heights book clubs with the express intention of considering its new place in the zeitgeist. When Vogue launched its book club in January and announced Wuthering Heights as its first pick, staff culture writer Emma Specter wrote that the "Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi of it all" was welcome, but not central, to the discussion.Former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones also chose Wuthering Heights as the first title for her new Substack book club, which is suffused with the chic intellectualism of glossy magazines. Jones, who holds a PhD in English from Columbia, writes posts that are conversational without sacrificing analytical rigor, discussing "why Emily Brontë's windswept romance is actually a novel of revenge," the trope of the orphan, and the deceptiveness of its "tempestuous teenage" appearance.After viewing a pre-screening of the film, Jones returned to her Substack with a list of spoiler-free notes on Fennell's "choices with respect to the novel." It's hopeful to hear her idealism about book clubs, the way they can cut through the myopia of individual readings and redraw well-worn lines of criticism."I think anything that gets people together to talk about books is high on my list of excellent cultural situations," Jones told PW.Jones doesn't pretend to know the "fortuitous" circumstances behind Wuthering Heights's ascent. (Sam Spratford)
A most strange and mysterious story, calculated to excite any other feelings than those of pleasure; interesting, it certainly is, but the interest is not a pleasing one. It possesses considerable affinity to “Jane Eyre”, edited by Currer Bell, noticed in one of our late numbers, but wants its vivacity and its pathos.The principal character, Heathcliff, resembles in no slight degree the Rochester of “Jane Eyre”: he has all Rochester’s failings, but none of his virtues; he is passionate, and bears malice; all who offend him are ruined both in purse and mind, though years elapse before his plans are matured and carried out. His nature is all darkness; and he stoops to anything to gain his purpose.Originally, he is brought into the family of the proprietor of Wuthering Heights from the streets; he is there ill used by the son, petted and loved by the daughter, and strongly loving her in return; but, when the daughter is about to marry a neighbour’s son, stung by a sense of her unkindness, and the general ill treatment he has received, he runs away. The daughter marries, and after some years Heathcliff returns: several scenes ensue between his former companion and himself—she dies broken hearted—he marries her sister-in-law, and succeeds in his attempts to gain possession of the whole of the property of his former benefactor: he ill-treats his wife; she flies from him, and dies when her son is about 12 years old.Heathcliff obtains possession of his son, and, by a succession of cold-blooded stratagems and lies, succeeds in marrying him to the daughter of his former love. The son dies soon after the marriage, and the young widow ultimately marries the grandson of the first proprietor of Wuthering Heights, who had been allowed to run wild about the house in his youth, and made to work as a common labourer on the property. The story closes with the death of Heathcliff who, after making restitution, dies a hardened infidel.Such is a very brief outline of “Wuthering Heights”. The story is connectedly told, and the characters are well and vividly portrayed; but we cannot say that the sketches of the strong, hardened in wickedness, and of the weak, led away into sin, are subjects of pleasing interest.
In Brontë’s novel, fireplaces do not warm but “blaze,” while winds do not blow but “roar,” and the mood of a room may be likened to a “tempest” and the snow-covered moors to a “billowy, white ocean.” It’s a language of primal force—apt for Brontë’s world, with its pitiless nature and casual violence—and of an almost adolescent emotional intensity that matches that of its young protagonists. Arnold’s Wuthering Heights speaks the same language. Usually favoring a charged, handheld naturalism for her working-class stories set in contemporary suburban spaces, Arnold adapts her style here to suit rural 18th-century Yorkshire. Between scenes of non-professional performers and earthy character actors exchanging terse period dialogue, there are shuddering images, perhaps all snatched on the fly—a colossal tree quaking in a gale; a ferocious, panting dog chasing another through mud on the Earnshaw farm; birds flying in formation across a foreboding grey sky. Abandoning any period-piece classicism—that stately form so often used to translate classic texts like Wuthering Heights to film—in favor of an elemental cinema vérité, Arnold approximates Brontë’s wild poetry, in image and sound, like no other filmmaker.Thematically, too, Arnold’s Wuthering Heights gets closer to the source text than most. Many Wuthering Heights adaptations foreground the bitter romance while other concerns became less prominent, but for Arnold as for Brontë, the love between Cathy and Heathcliff is but the poisoned heart of a larger story. Echoing Arnold’s work at large, 2011’s Wuthering Heights is, like Brontë’s novel, also about young people coming uneasily of age in an adult world, about the long consequences of violence and neglect, about how people are forged by their environments. A social realist filmmaker, Arnold (like Brontë) sympathizes with those on the delicate fringes of society, and understands that Heathcliff is not merely a smoldering romantic antihero, but a damaged, destructive individual whose character has been informed by his class, his gender, and—perhaps above all—his race. [...]Even so, what’s remarkable about Arnold’s film is not how often it departs from Brontë’s text but how closely it aligns with it. The 2011 Wuthering Heights might have little of the shine of other, supposedly more reverential adaptations, but Brontë’s novel doesn’t suggest polish or cry out for reverence. Its language is fervent and untamed, its story not pretty but knotted and frequently cruel. Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is a radical adaptation, and one that after so many interpretations, is the only one to get something close to the savage, complex spirit of the book onto the screen. (Brogan Morris)
So yes, it “accompanies” the film. It’s also the best part of it; a correction: Brontë’s gothica as something that clings and stains. And Charli, thoughtfully and tastefully, suffusing that stain into her continued ascendancy. (Rhys Morgan)
Perhaps, though, that is the point: Charli intentionally leaves the listener yearning for something they cannot quite name and reflecting the tortured longing that defines the “Wuthering Heights” film.The production, lyricism and instrumentation across the album are magnificent. Charli stepped out of “BRAT” with the same messy confidence that defined the era and into a world of storytelling and anecdotal realism. The project is harsh but gentle, authentic but exploratory — and with “Wuthering Heights,” Charli has never been more herself. (Mia Hamon)
All great soundtracks can extract themselves from the context of the film. Even without seeing Wuthering Heights, you get a feeling Charli XCX is writing for the film, rather than adapting the Emily Bronte classic to the studio independent of Fennell’s vision. Sometimes a bit of a creative clash fuels a stronger fire, and there are moments of this on Wuthering Heights. You can predict where Wuthering Heights is headed, beat for beat. Rising string sections, a few club beats to remind listeners where they may know the name Charli XCX from, and ultimately a collection of songs which hardly scream period piece. Such is the point. Subversion of authorial intent is the way forward for adaptations now, a counter to predictability which has, ironically, become predictable in of itself. For those who did not exhaust themselves on Brat, then Wuthering Heights may have a few sparks of quality. (Ewan Gleadow)
Everything about Charli’s “Wuthering Heights” contradicts itself. It’s classical and avant-garde, a euphoric release but also tautly restrained. Yet in those idiosyncrasies lies an innate truth towards the nature of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, where their dichotomies are what makes them the most complex. By embracing innate messiness rather than smoothing it out, Charli’s concept album reaffirms her bold instinct of adapting a widely known love story into something unmistakably, electrifyingly, her own. (Amelia Knust)
Although it may seem like a drastic departure, in this light, “Wuthering Heights” might be a homecoming for Charli, who’s only ever comfortable in change. Whether the light or darkness will carry into her next venture can’t be said. Knowing Charli, she’ll create new matter entirely. (Allison Treanor)
“Wuthering Heights” by Charli xcx is a SparkNotes version of Brontë’s novel: Casual listeners have an opportunity to catch the “vibe” of the novel without actually reading some 400 pages. As a concept album, “Wuthering Heights” is masterful. Charli xcx brings what she does best — heavy production and intense autotune — to work alongside moody strings and hedonistic themes. With this new album Charli xcx brilliantly escaped the trap of trying to recreate her success in “BRAT,” instead pivoting to showcase her storytelling skills and creative fluidity. (Alyssia Ouhocine)
If this had been released as a standalone project, it would have been hailed as a neat, sonically cohesive effort. Singles like “Altars” already have great production and excellent lyrics, and connecting them to the film’s passion only serves to highlight their brilliance and make for an even better listening experience. Grounding the album in a world, like the film “Wuthering Heights,” strengthens it. (Francis Rienzo)
By trading strobe-lit arenas for wild and windy moors, the singer meets the challenge of transplanting her music into a new landscape. Wuthering Heights is both a reinvention and familiar offering from the singer: underlining her adventurousness as a musician and the strengths (and limits) of her songwriting. (Harry Tafoya)
La nueva Cumbres Borrascosas no podría polarizar más. La crítica la ha tachado de superficial, fría y extravagante. El público, en cambio, ha acudido en masa para pasar el fin de semana de San Valentín sufriendo con los amores de Catherine y Heathcliff, interpretados por Margot Robbie y Jacob Elordi. En redes triunfan los vídeos de los fans recreando el cartel de la película para entregarse a los brazos de Elordi o grabando sus reacciones y sus lágrimas en los cines. Lengüetazos, suspiros y “apología blanca”: así son las reacciones más extremas que ha generado la película. (...)La escritora argentina Mariana Enriquez, autora de obras como Nuestra parte de noche (Anagrama, 2019), se asomó a su perfil de Instagram para dedicar tres elaborados posts en los que iba desmenuzado uno a uno los pecados de la película. “Que tonta esta chica si le quedó este melodrama mal hecho y nada más de su fantasía de origen”, escribía en relación al acercamiento juvenil de Fennell. (Lucas Barquero) (Translation)
Welcome back to our bonus edition of Plot Twist, focusing on history. This month we are pondering the literary kind. The release of a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” has reignited an argument that has been raging since the 1840s: is Emily Brontë’s novel better or worse than “Jane Eyre”, written by her sister Charlotte?The two books have plenty in common: for starters, they both feature headstrong female characters entangled in complicated romances with brooding antiheroes. Yet “Wuthering Heights” is generally considered to be grittier and more complex. When literary critics rank the best books of all time, Emily’s story is often higher up the list than Charlotte’s. (Rachel Lloyd)
Since the film’s racy first trailer dropped in September, literary fans have flocked to message boards and TikTok groups with their thoughts. While some were “open” to Fennell’s hyper-sexualised interpretation, others – including BookTok influencer Kylee Smith – urged her to change the film’s title.“I think this conversation wouldn’t be happening if she just called the movie something else,” Smith, 30, tells The Independent. “I would probably see a movie that had Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in beautiful outfits on the moors.”The Ohio-based creative, who’s been a Wuthering Heights enthusiast since her teens, is one of the book fans who won’t be watching the film.“I have no intention to see it in [cinemas],” she says. “With the casting decisions she’s made, I’m not going to waste my time and spend the money. I’d rather re-read the book – which is what I’m doing.” (Lauren Morris)
Another of these pure (sad) souls argues that not every adaptation of a book is "licit". We guess the judge of what is licit and what is illicit should be the chorus of pure (sad) souls. They know better. Read about this epitome of modesty in Infobae.
In the 179 years since Brontë’s Gothic classic was published, Heathcliff and Cathy (as he calls her), have been resurrected in different forms. While many of the earlier adaptations focused on the social constraints that doomed the couple, contemporary adaptations have moved more toward fetishizing the destructive romance. These six versions (completists can watch many, many more) — spanning the past 85 years — show the wild swings in passion, temperament and power dynamics.
1939: Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Troubled Sophisticates1958: Richard Burton and Rosemary Harris as Histrionic Lovers1967: Ian McShane and Angela Scoular as Social Antipodes1992: Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Ruined Romantics2009: Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley as Toxic Exes2026: Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Shallow Sensualists
Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected anything more from socialite-turned-filmmaker Fennell. She has a directorial track record of superficial films that prefer to shock rather than transport the viewer. In many ways, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is symptomatic of our times – a cold, mean take on true love. This cuts against the grain of Brontë’s original. Even in their nastiest, cruellest moments (of which there are many), the reader is left in no doubt that Cathy and Healthcliff love one another. As Heathcliff tells Cathy after her death:‘Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul.’Fennell has massacred one of literature’s most passionate and tragic love stories. It is a cynical adaptation for our silly times. Watch at your peril. (Ella Whelan in Spiked)
Fennell’s final tableaus in “Wuthering Heights” were artful, leaving the audience with Heathcliff lying nearly on top of Catherine’s limp body. Moments before, she laid in pure white sheets stained with crimson — which resemble a vagina if you're watching astutely— as a continuation of Fennell’s heavy-handed sexual metaphors. Fennell’s commentary on erotic expression and obsession is well done, but her comparisons are almost suffocating. The film itself is an intricate and beautiful work, certainly Fennell’s best. I just wish it had not been “Wuthering Heights.” (Ellie Fivas in The Emory Wheel)
Cabe la posibilidad de que, para aquel espectador que se acerque a este universo por primera vez y sin el bagaje del referente literario, la propuesta de Fennell resulte una experiencia sumamente atractiva, funcionando como puerta de entrada a un clásico que aquí se torna accesible. Sin embargo, para quien acuda buscando la arquitectura completa de la venganza y el eco de ese viento cruel que azota las cumbres, la sensación de vacío parece inevitable. Fennell ha preferido romantizar una trama definida originalmente por su aridez y su violencia moral, simplificando la cronología en favor de una narrativa más convencional y estilizada. Al tomar este camino, se corre el riesgo de olvidar que el verdadero poder de la prosa de Brontë no residía en lo que se podía capturar con la cámara, sino en aquello que era demasiado terrible y salvaje para ser mostrado. (Julia Espinel in 35 milímetros) (Translation)
En definitiva, esta versión de Cumbres Borrascosas se posiciona como uno de los estrenos más destacados de la temporada. Es una invitación a redescubrir un clásico desde una perspectiva audaz, que no teme mostrar la imposibilidad de redención de sus protagonistas y que reafirma por qué la historia de Catherine y Heathcliff sigue siendo un espejo inquietante de la condición humana. (Susana Gutiérrez in El Diario) (Translation)
As a general rule, I don’t like getting this personal in film reviews, but it’s impossible to separate Fennell the person from “Wuthering Heights” the movie. Auteur theory is a double-edged sword, I suppose. It’s great when you have a real vision. It cuts deep when you don’t. Every choice in this movie is the wrong one. And the worst thing of all? It’s not even an interesting failure. It’s boring. And it will be my absolute delight to forget that it exists. (Aly Caviness in Midwest Film Journal)
Beyond the leads, the supporting cast adds unexpected layers of intrigue and amusement. Alison Oliver (another Saltburn alum) is hilarious as Isabella Linton, bringing both wit and agency to a character often sidelined in adaptations. Not enough people are talking about Hong Chau’s resonant performance as Nelly Dean, who is quietly magnetic and grounds the chaos of both households with precision. Shazad Latif’s Edgar Linton is subtle and restrained, a necessary counterpoint to the volatility of Cathy and Heathcliff. Each performance is committed and idiosyncratic, echoing Fennell’s approach to storytelling more broadly.And none of the performances would land without Fennell’s clear vision and her particular brand of fearlessness. “The thing that I’ve learned is really important to me is making everyone feel safe enough to do something bad,” she noted in the same BFI Southbank talk. “So I’m really only interested in something if it’s just on the edge—and sometimes over the edge—of tasteless or silly or overblown.” Fennell is a high-art offshoot of a John Waters ethos. She’s a sick freak, and I like it.Judging from the reviews and think pieces thus far, she’s succeeded on edge-teetering at the very least. Fennell’s daringly indulgent style permeates every frame, and it’s a world worth the time. (Melanie Robinson in Flood Magazine)
When the movie ended, I felt incredibly out of place as I looked around and saw everyone sobbing at the death of Catherine. Because of her insane cruelty throughout the film, I felt so disconnected from her character. If anything, I felt her death was inevitable and, in some ways, deserved. The film had been foreshadowing her death from the beginning, from the blood-red hallway walls of Edgar’s mansion to Catherine’s own red and black dresses. I was surprised her death hadn’t come sooner, and that she didn’t die in some horrific way because of the frequent mention of hanging at the beginning of the film. (Grace Chaves in The Point)
Fennell’s shift to sex reflects other shifts in the novel's moral focus, as many of its underlying moral themes are absent. (John M. Grondelski in The Catholic World Report)
Elordi’s Heathcliff, complete with a roguish ‘80s pirate earring, is more than just a handsome brooder. He carries the weight of a boy who was told he was only a servant, unworthy of the girl who is his entire world. Robbie’s Cathy is a force of nature, luminous and dangerous, torn between the wild freedom Heathcliff represents and the comfort offered by the wealthy Mr. Linton (Shazad Latif). Her inf amous declaration that marrying Heathcliff would “degrade her” lands with the force of a physical blow, setting their destinies in motion. (Preston Barta in Westworld)
GeoTV mentions how Jennifer Aniston has shared on her IG a hilarious 'Friends' scene to review 'Wuthering Heights.' LAD Bible thinks that Jacob Elordi's accent ruins the film. The Guardian shares some of the readers' opinions of the film. The Yorkshireman visits Top Withens. Publishers Weekly comments that book clubs are swooning over Wuthering Heights 2026.
Thursday Talk: Brontëmania: From literature to screen
Brontë Space at the Old School Room, February 19, 2pmZoom: February 26, 7:30pmWhy do we love following in the footsteps of our favourite writers? Starting with the Grand Tour through to modern film adaptations, discover how literary tourism has changed in the UK over the centuries.This talk will focus on literary pilgrimages to the Brontës' home in Haworth, beginning in the late 19th century. Since then, millions of visitors have travelled from across the world to experience the place where Charlotte, Emily and Anne wrote their famous novels. Now, the 2026 release of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights continues to draw new audiences to the home of the Brontës.
Thursday, 19 Feb, 5:30pmBrontë Parsonage Museum'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!'Come in from the wild and windy moors to experience the cosy candlelit rooms in which the novels of the Brontë sisters were written and who knows, you may even hear the tapping of a lost waif on the window trying to get in.Our museum shop will also be open late for anyone looking for a unique Brontë-inspired gift.
Heights are indeed getting wuthered.Not only did Emerald Fennell’s bold take on the classic novel collect an impressive $83 million at the global box office this past weekend, but the Spotify audiobook version of the Emily Brontë story has also seen a dramatic revival. According to the public relations and communications firm Burson Global, “Wuthering Heights” has seen a 440% increase in audiobook consumption since the film trailer dropped last September.According to data, this increase isn’t just repeat or nostalgia fans – first-time listeners to the audiobook increased by 260%. Their reports also indicate that Gen Z (ages 13-28) is particularly drawn to this classic, with this age group experiencing a 191% increase in streaming the audiobook. (Anna Tingley)
Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” this weekend opened to $88.5 million over the four-day weekend ($82 million in three days), all against a production budget of $80 million (before marketing costs). It’s not exactly a record-breaker, as it’s behind the domestic opening for plenty of other female-directed films, and it’s #14 in terms of 4-day openings over Presidents’ Day weekend. It even opened a little soft compared to some projections, which originally had “Wuthering Heights” reaching $40 million or even $50 million domestic before the weekend. It is however still a boon for Warner Bros., which now has had nine straight movies open to #1 dating back to last year (suddenly a lot is riding on Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!”).But between her debut “Promising Young Woman” ($18.8 million) and “Saltburn” ($21 million), Fennell now has three movies that will crack the Top 100 on that Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report in a year, and it puts her in the conversation among some of the other top-performing female directors at the box office of all time. (Brian Welk)
The cinematography lingers on touch, breath and silence, turning longing into something tactile. The brilliant and pulsating Charli xcx soundtrack pushes the intensity further, blending gothic atmospheres with modern pop energy in the period setting. Paired with these visuals, the music instantly makes the story feel both Victorian and defiantly modern and bold. It draws outside the lines and rejects modesty. [...]Several scenes are beautiful and deeply unsettling at once. While watching, I found myself unexpectedly shaken, even in tears at certain moments — not because the story felt softened, but because it felt magnified. Fennell does not resolve a famously problematic love story; instead, she aestheticizes it, leaving viewers to sit with something uncomfortable yet undeniably captivating. (Rachel Marlowe and Kate Rothermel)
For me, this is a very difficult film to rate. It is a noticeable departure from the source material, taking creative liberties that augment the story in such a damning way. However, on its own, if under a completely separate name, the film itself is not terrible; rather enjoyable, even. If this was a new love story about two people in the 1800s, with an overtly sexual tone, then it could have been quite an enjoyable watch. The story and plot is engaging and fun to watch unfold, and the way each actor plays off each other is very well done. That being said, it is not possible for me to keep these two works totally separate. One of the most famous and important books of the 19th century deserves a respectful and proper adaptation. If the movie was its own thing, then it would yield close to four stars, but keeping in mind all the questionable decisions and changes, I must dock it and give it three stars out of five. (Alfie Eville)
Yet, sparkly bandaids can’t fix the bullet holes Fennell shot in the heart of the story. She completely assassinates the main characters and abandons the second half of the novel. Fennell turns the abused, single mother Isabella into a “girlboss” in a consensual, submissive sexual relationship with Heathcliff. Nelly, the maid, is villainized in the film as the driving force between Catherine and Heathcliff, while in the book she is a lower class hero who seeks to protect Catherine from abuse.The film itself attempts to shock the viewer — whether that be through the town’s erotic response to an execution, or Heathcliff’s sexual fascination with eggs — but consistently falls short.While the cast portrayed their respective characters well, their performances cannot throw water on the fire that is the script. Adapting a beloved classic is no easy feat, especially one that has been adapted dozens of times before, but ignoring the soul of the book in its entirety is a challenge itself.Fennell excludes the children that Catherine and Heathcliff have in the film, who in the novel go on to marry each other and break the generational cycle of abuse, instead choosing to kill Catherine after a miscarriage. While the tragedy itself was emotional, the film’s conclusion was unsatisfying. It’s as if Fennell gave a really interesting setup and walked away from the mic as soon as it was time to deliver the punchline. As “Wuthering Heights” ends, the audience is left wanting to know what the movie was about.What was the message of that movie? Or, was there a message at all? (Ava Demcher)
Fenell made “Wuthering Heights” not for bookworms but for cinephiles. The movie is stunningly shot. The mise en scene is just gorgeous in that it’s such a filthily excessive style that is common in Fenell movies. It’s a study of true filmmaking, but it’s not a true study of adaptation.Director Guillermo Del Toro had a famous saying during the “Frankenstein” press tour that “Adapting a book is like marrying a widow. You have to respect the late husband, but on Saturdays, you are allowed to get it on.”Emerald Fennel instead chose to spit on the husband’s grave and get it on every day instead. (Adrihanna Collins)
While the score, composed by Anthony Willis, is startlingly dark and majestic, the occasional interjection of a Charli xcx song is disappointing and jarring. It turns these scenes into what feels like a music video, adding to the never-ending list of things that make it impossible to take the film seriously.It’s evident in both her interviews and the film itself that Fennell has slapped a beloved, canonical title over a cookie-cutter tragic romance in the hopes of drawing audiences excited by the idea of watching something “cultural.”But her exclusion of any complexity in favor of numerous sex scenes make it clear that Fennell was aiming for a box-office hit instead of a literary tribute, much to the devastation of Brontë fans everywhere — and to the detriment of the story itself. (Amelia Barter)
The movie itself was good; however, instead of marketing something as an adaptation, it would’ve been better to be portrayed as a new story. In some parts, it seemed they slapped on the names of the known characters of “Wuthering Heights” and offered nothing else in similarity. (Ruby Johnson)
Glaring issues aside, “Wuthering Heights” has its moments, mainly via the lens of DP Linus Sandgren. There are some striking compositions, with Cathy’s white wedding train billowing across the crepuscular moor a highlight. And then there are the leeches… Overall, “Wuthering Heights” is a trainwreck, albeit a weirdly watchable one. It careers giddily through its run time (although one feels such a thematically weighty story should have more of a sense of gravity or heft), and you get the sense at least some of its curious absurdities are by design; that Emerald Fennell is thumbing her nose at anyone who ever took Emily Brontë’s baroque gothic fantasia seriously as a love story in the first place. (Kevin Ibbotson-Wight)
Doubtless there will be more versions of Wuthering Heights. This is the more puzzling and challenging one. (Father Peter Malone)
The positive standout of this film is the cinematography. The film is very visually striking, with beautiful costuming and production design in every meticulously arranged frame. From the first shots of the film, Fennell is able to maintain a dark, slimy tone. [...]However, it seems that Fennell wanted to make a movie that only works on mute. Throughout the film, composer Anthony Willis’ beautiful string-heavy score is attacked by Charli xcx’s auto-tuned vocals from the soundtrack album. While there are moments where Charli’s songs work well, such as in the opening scene of the movie, most of the time her songs feel out of place. (Thais Zboichyk)
Brontë punishes her readers for even liking her characters. Its most charismatic and compelling characters, the doomed lovers Heathcliff and Catherine, are also two of its greatest monsters. Feral and violent, Brontë’s Heathcliff and Catherine ruin lives and inflict wanton amounts of pain for the sheer sport of it all, but they also love each other overwhelmingly, ferociously, enough to tear down the world all around each other. Reading about them, it’s both difficult to wish them well and impossible not to feel that they really should be together. That contradiction is what creates the tension that powers the reader through this brutal, bleak book, with all its misery and squalor. [...]Brontë’s Cathy beats her servants, her horses, her husband. She flies into uncontrollable rages and plots to destroy her enemies. Fennell’s Cathy offers the occasional mean girl putdown, swiftly belied by her beautiful tear-swollen eyes, which reveal her true purity of heart. She is not so much passionate and angry as she is pragmatic and a little bit petty.Brontë’s Heathcliff slowly and systematically bankrupts his abuser and then ruins the man’s son. Fennell’s Heathcliff kindly cares for his adopted father in his broken old age. Brontë’s Heathcliff tortures the feckless Isabella’s puppy, then seduces her and abuses her and their child. Fennell’s Heathcliff mostly stares in confusion as Isabella writhes in pleasure on the end of a dog’s leash, having not only enthusiastically consented to the treatment, but in fact instigated it. When onscreen Catherine tells Isabella that Heathcliff will eat her alive, the moment feels absurd: The audience knows by this point that Isabella is an oversexed weirdo who will do whatever she wants with reserved, pliant Heathcliff. (In fact, she does.)No adaptation must be absolutely faithful to its source text in order to be good, but it has to do something. It has to have an energy, a source of tension, a reason to exist. But having excised the tension of Brontë’s novel from her film, Fennell replaces it with absolutely nothing. Instead, you are asked only to watch beautiful people engage in mild BDSM play upon the beautiful moors, and then die through no fault of their own.All that gleefully perverse production design made promises, and she follows through on absolutely none of them. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” reaches no heights at all. (Constance Grady)
This ache for trashiness is not mere prurience on my part. Indeed, the film goes out of its way to cater to the prurience in the audience. No, my frustration with the film's refusal to tip full-bore into a trashy soap-opera narrative is also implied in its heightened style. Fennell got some excellent work from her photographer and production designers to create an unreal space for her film to take place in. One might be reminded of the films of Ken Russell, complete with their sexual excess.The heightened look very much leaves the door open for a more extreme approach. Some might be upset that Fennell took her film so far from the source material. I am frustrated that she didn't take it far enough. She could have turned "Wuthering Heights" into a straight-up horror movie. What if Heathcliff and Cathy murder Edgar and can only dispose of the body by eating it? What if Nelly (Hong Chau) or Isabella (Alison Oliver) found out about the murder? The line between an angst-riddled romance like "Wuthering Heights" and 1950s issues of "Tales from the Crypt" is startlingly fine, and Fennell could easily have taken her film into EC Comics territory.And this would merely be following the path that Fennell herself laid out for us. It wouldn't have been surprising at all. And it would have certainly been more fun. By backing off and ending "Wuthering Heights" as a tragedy, it merely highlights that Heathcliff and Cathy are kind of bad people whose own actions brought nothing but pain and misery. I love a good tragedy, of course, but it's not a great tragedy at the end of the day. But if Fennell had added murder, we would have had something. (Witney Seibold)
Collider, not unfairly, surmised that Brontë is “rolling in her grave.”Brontë probably is, to which I ask… so what?!Why does it matter so much that Emerald Fennell personally deviated from an oft-adapted novel to craft her own maximalist fantasia? She is not the first filmmaker to take striking liberties with Brontë. In fact, it was not until the 2011 Andrea Arnold miniseries starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson that a major adaptation attempted to cover the full multigenerational breadth of the book. Until then, most followed William Wyler’s lead from the classic 1939 Hollywood version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon by ending the story with Cathy’s death and Heathcliff’s plea she haunt him forevermore. Arnold’s miniseries also holds the distinction of being the first version to cast a Black actor as Heathcliff. Still, before and after we’ve had Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy, and Timothy Dalton, among others, play Heathcliff, and films like the ‘39 version which conspicuously soften Cathy’s selfishness or Heathcliff’s sadism. [...]It is easy to wonder whether Fennell is held to a different standard than other filmmakers, perhaps because of her tendencies for decadence and excess (and questionable class subtexts) courting acrimony from a specific, popular lens of modern online criticism. Or, perhaps, it is because she’s a woman. Truthfully, though, it might be less about Fennell than the source material. While del Toro and Villeneuve, like Fennell, had intense formative experiences growing up with the novels they adapted, Wuthering Heights is a far more universal foundational text for thousands due to being on the English curriculum of most secondary or high schools on either side of the Atlantic.But at the end of the day, art is much more fulfilling when engaged on its own terms versus comparing it side by side with a text. The best films based on books generally make mincemeat of their source material—The Godfather, Jaws, The Shining—and as del Toro himself once said, “At the end of the day, I say adapting is like marrying a widow. You can pay respect to the late husband, but on Saturdays, you gotta get it on.”Being able to get it on is one thing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has no trouble with, especially when Charli XCX ballads drift across the 19th century moors. (David Crow)
Perhaps it’s silly to berate “Wuthering Heights” for its failures, given Hollywood has always been a big-budget exercise in the cross-pollination of celebrity. The quality of engagement makes no difference as long as the publicity machine continues to churn.Recently there has been no corner of the internet in which you couldn’t find Robbie, Fennell or Elordi answering questions you never asked, with anecdotes you never cared to hear. What is perhaps more gripping than Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” – more complex, more laden with dramatic tension and cosmic irony and more accurate to Brontë’s vision of intergenerational violence – is Hollywood’s crisis of legitimacy playing out before us. (Kasumi Borczyk)
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rightly hailed as heroines of feminism, but their lives and works far outstrip the narrow boundaries of such fashionable causes: they are astounding evidence of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of pitiless adversity. No wonder that we find them difficult to understand in our debased age. (Nigel Jones)
“Wuthering Heights” is a satisfying listen as well as a canny solution to the problem of how to follow up a breakthrough record. (Mark Richardson)
Ultimately, the album makes the most sense with the context that is a backdrop to a much larger project. Many of the songs fade together when listened to in succession, and while the project is very ambient and atmospheric, it wouldn’t be in my typical listening rotation.However, the soundtrack was a very smart move for Charli xcx’s career. While “brat” achieved Charli xcx her most mainstream success, it also created expectations for her artistry centered on edgy, danceable tracks. (Jessica Johnson)
Introducing Lounge x “Wuthering Heights” - inspired by the film of the season and reimagined through the art of flattering fit. This edit captures untamed romance and quiet obsession through deep jewel-toned intimates, sculpting corsetry, and intricate embroidery.
The Lounge "Wuthering Heights" inspired collection includes themed lingerie and sleepwear items like sets, bras, bodysuits, thongs, and pyjamas. Further information on The Handbook.
- Dahlia Intimates Set (Navy): A complete lingerie set with bra and matching bottoms in deep navy, featuring flattering fit and subtle embroidery for an untamed romantic vibe.
- Evelyn Intimates Set (Green): Jewel-toned green set including bra and briefs, designed with sculpting elements and intricate details evoking quiet obsession on the moors.
- Dahlia Bodysuit: Versatile one-piece bodysuit in navy-inspired hues, blending corsetry-like shaping with delicate embroidery for film-themed allure.
- Elodie Corset Set (Pink): Pink corset-style bra and thong set, emphasizing structured support and romantic lacework.
- Two-Tone Blossom Balcony Bra (Hot Pink): Balcony bra in vibrant hot pink with two-tone blossom prints, offering lift and floral detailing.
- Rosebud: Ribbed balcony bra with white floral and rosebud motifs, capturing delicate, obsessive romance.
- Caia Thong (Pink): Minimalist pink thong for pairing with sets, in soft fabric with subtle accents.
- Satin Cami Pyjama Top (Floral Print): Silky sleep top with floral patterns, adding a nighttime layer to the edit's sleepwear.
- Modal Pyjama Shirt: Soft modal fabric shirt for comfortable, themed lounging.
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & SocietyWuthering Heights is a story full of passion, violence and sexual tension.So it's no surprise that it shocked Victorian readers when it first came out. How did Emily Brontë, the daughter of a clergyman, create such a provocative world? How did the Brontê sisters write about sex and sexuality in their work? And how accurate is the new film to the original story?!Joining Kate today is Dr Claire O'Callaghan, author and Brontë scholar, to take us back to Victorian England at the peak of the Industrial Revolution, and find out more about this scandalous story.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
Wuthering Heights adaptation is what happens when no one reads. (...)The latest work from English filmmaker Emerald Fennell — who cultivated a sizable following with her tawdry 2023 dark comedy Saltburn — is a loose adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 Wuthering Heights — loose being a charitable term doing more than its share of heavy lifting — and a reflection of a stark literary crisis plaguing our modern age. (Harry Khachatrian in Washington Examiner)
Emerald Fennell's adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" ultimately falls flat, trading significant characters and emotional intimacy for awkward erotica. (...)However, even if the film is reviewed as an independent entity, it still relies on montages, shock value and awkward erotica, which do not make up for underdeveloped protagonists and a complete lack of story development. (1 of 5) (Mia Colangelo in Pipe Dreams)
There’s something undeniably Shakespearean about Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Like Romeo, Heathcliff is “fortune’s fool,” undone by a love so infinite he’ll destroy everything and everyone just so he won’t be without it. But in some ways, this story is even more gut-wrenching. Romeo and Juliet’s romance was impulsive and short, kept apart by family drama; Catherine and Heathcliff torture themselves slowly through their pride and insistence on possessing one another completely. So yes, the film is provocative. It’s romantic. It’s erotic, and even gross at times. And in that way, it lives up to the hype because it’s so deliciously, unapologetically an Emerald Fennell film. And I loved every second of it. (Liana Minassian in The Everygirl)
Ultimately, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of prioritizing aesthetic over substance. In its attempt to modernize the moors for a commercial audience, the adaptation loses the very soul of the novel, turning a classic into a cheesy romance. (Madelyn Stewart in The News Record)
To her credit, Fennell understands that it’s more fun to smash a dollhouse than to construct one meticulously. Her sledgehammer approach to party scenes in her previous films is rivaled by Wuthering Heights’s opening sequence of a public hanging. Though we are supposed to be in the late 18th century, the mood is more medieval. After a few moments of the hanged man’s dying gasps, a Charli xcx song floods the soundtrack (the truly terrifying track “House,” which she recorded with John Cale), and the crowd erupts in a carnal frenzy. People roar, some start fucking, a nun closes her eyes, and parents pull away their children. The scene does not exist in Brontë’s novel, but it’s somehow closest to the monstrous vitality of that world, a place where the dead refuse to die. Too bad that Fennell never gives her characters the chance to live. (Genevieve Yue in Film Comment)
In lieu of Bronte’s original tale, Fennell offers an odd mix of campy Harlequin-esque romance and weird Gothic horror. Within this concoction, sumptuous sets, flashy costumes and wild weather turn out to be the real stars. (...)It all adds up to an overheated mess. Thus, in the end, this “Wuthering Heights” might more aptly be titled “Withering Lows.” (Joseph McAleer in Catholic Review)
Fennell wields overacting from the lead as a strategy for preserving a classical tone. However, the choice to cast modern A-listers in a period piece set to the music of a Gen Z chart-topper already forgoes the chances of being perceived as authentically vintage. Once the story reaches its climactic change of ownership of the Wuthering Heights estate, this ability-to-go-viral tone takes a turn for the better. This pick-up in momentum and quality improves the impact of Robbie’s acting because her whimsical runs across the moors come off more genuine than performative. At this moment, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” redeems itself as an entertaining spectacle, no matter how far removed from its blueprint. Luckily, it does not always take itself seriously at times, like the ridiculously tall mountain of empty beer bottles that surround Cathy’s father, who turns to alcohol in his isolation. This admission of dramatization welcomes laughs and critiques all the same. Clearly, Fennell was not looking to be conventional. (Georgie Gassaron in The Ithacan)
Millennial Fennell may be tapping into a dark romance zeitgeist with “Wuthering Heights”, but she’s also going against the grain when it comes to younger viewers. Despite Gen Z’s pornography habits, headlines proclaim that Zoomers are uninterested in sex or even sex scenes in movies and television. The perception is so pervasive that actress Olivia Wilde is practically begging Gen Z to buy tickets to her new film I Want Your Sex. One of Wilde’s younger costars said she hopes the film inspires risk-averse Zoomers to have sex, adding, “Sex can be lighthearted. It doesn’t have to stare. (Evie Solheim in First Things)
In contrast, Wuthering Heights is a little late to the party. The mix of contemporary culture and period drama on which it relies has become an established trope, from the appearance of a Converse trainer in Sophia Copolla’s Marie Antoinette back in 2006 to orchestras playing Ariana Grande in the more recent Bridgerton (2020–). Perhaps in time, Fennell’s oeuvre will be appreciated for its encapsulation of our present, an era in which the distinction between a film and its promotion has all but evaporated, both transformed into tools for creating a blitz of images designed to dominate social media feeds. But for now, as pleasant as it is to see Margot Robbie in a bodice and a pair of red sunglasses à la late 90s Britney Spears, this is not, on its own, enough to own the moment – or to fill more than two hours of cinema. (Rosanna McLaughlin in ArtReview)
Ultimately, this “Wuthering Heights” adaptation succeeds most when it’s viewed not as a translation of the novel but as a reimagined, loose version of it.It’s understandable why some viewers feel protective of the original source material. But treating adaptations as creative conversations rather than sacred reproductions opens the door for something more interesting — and sometimes more memorable.Fennell’s version may not replace the classic in anyone’s mind. But it does prove that even a story told countless times can still feel new when someone is willing to take risks with it. (Kamdyn Sargent in The Suffolk Journal)
They cry and mewl and pout at each other, break for a costume change, and then do it all again, striking postures of indignance and hurt as they growl about their feelings and heave their respective bosoms. They stand stoically by Cathy’s father’s grave, the wind tearing camply at her black veil, then, practically within sight of the funeral party, reunite with animal intensity. Occasionally in fits of love-stricken anger Robbie will beat her girly fists on Elordi’s manly chest. When all other ways of communicating their profound bond have been exhausted, they stick their fingers in each other’s mouths. (John Maier in UnHerd)
“I have not broken your heart,” sighs Heathcliff during one sweaty, tear-streaked moment of truth with Cathy. “You have broken it, and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” That’s a great line, and Fennell is smart enough to retain it and many others; brave, too, considering the inevitable and palpable clash between her dialogue and Brontë’s. The hearts most likely to be broken by Wuthering Heights are those set, however sincerely (or foolishly), on the prospect of a faithful cinematic translation of a classic. For viewers at the skeptical end of the spectrum about Fennell’s filmmaking to date, the dubious choices on display may play less like disappointment than a grueling but finally gratifying kind of validation: It’s “very enjoyable.” (Adam Nayman in The Ringer)
Film as a medium requires compression and most subplots do not survive, but Brontë’s novel was never meant to be easily digested.When adaptations oversexualize characters, viewers are offered something more consumable. Was this a missed opportunity for Fennell to make a social commentary on race and class? Do modern adaptations assume viewers cannot comprehend depth? Or, do viewers prefer it that way?“Wuthering Heights,” the movie, is a hit. It is ambitious and emotionally resonant. But it still calls into question our modern appetite for complexity. Do audiences still crave the sharpness of a classic, or is the pretense of sophistication enough to sell? (Aditi Allam in The Flat Hat)
I was astonished. I was mesmerized. I was in profound thought. The realization of how much human connection can mean hit me deeply during Wuthering Heights. The theme of a forever-relationship taking place in the late 1800s spoke to me, especially in an era in which there were no technological advancements.Instead, only-face-to-face interactions which resulted in immersive moments of love. Fennell brings audiences on a journey that is one-of-a-kind. Not everyone may understand it at first, but the dramatics are a wild adventure that is all about love and how much it can hurt. (Tarek Fayoumi in Positively Naperville)
A sensual, stylised and satiric interpretation of Brontë's classic novel. (Jane Freebury in The Daily Advertiser)
Do I recommend this movie? Well, not to my mother. But if you’re anything like me and you enjoy stylized period adaptations that lean more into fantasy than accuracy, then go for it. (Steven Leatherwood in Indiana Daily Student)
It's dangerous to see the movie with your mother, as this fellow warns you.
This movie plays with the erotic - but never quite gets it right. The reason for this is Wuthering Heights is not a vehicle for sexual fantasies. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” has all the porno tropes: choking; quickies in the back of a car (or in this case, a carriage); dirty talk. There’s even a peeping tom scene as Cathy ventures into voyeurism as she watches through the floorboards as two servants do the deed. One says to the other: “Have you been a bad girl?” as his amour walks through horse bridles, before it is placed on her head.Yet there is one sexualisation of the text that sits very uncomfortably with me. Heathcliff in the original text murders dogs for the hell of it. He imprisons and rapes Isabella (played by Alison Oliver). He is a character of untold evil, brooding for literally years over his hatred at Cathy’s rejection of him. Yet, his treatment of Isabella is portrayed as a dominant/submissive relationship. He climbs in Isabella’s window and tells her exactly what he will do: he will not love her. He will hurt her. Throughout he asks: “Do you want me to stop?” Isabella nods her consent.This act of consent neuters the evil that Heathcliff is known for. Brontë’s text shows his acts as calculated, deliberate, and completely abhorrent. Yet, in Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, this evil is boiled down to a kink.Young viewers, who may not have read the text, may understand Heathcliff as Fennell shows him to be: a romantic hero striving at all costs to be with his one true love. When they eventually pick up Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, will they read his sadism as acts of love to be tolerated? Incel culture and misogyny is on the rise. We could do without translating it into something to be doe-eyed about. (Aimée Walsh)
Wuthering Heights is at its heart a story of class and race. Emerald Fennell has got it all wrong.By turning the novel into just a corset-heaving love story, the director has stripped it of what made it so boundary-pushing. (...)It’s difficult, when watching Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, not to imagine what Emily Brontë would have made of it. Before I get into it, I feel obliged to state that although I love the book I am not a purist. I often relish creative reinterpretations of classics. Admittedly, this one came with a fair few red flags, from the casting of Margot Robbie (simply too old, Cathy is a teenager) and Jacob Elordi (simply too white, Heathcliff, while his origins are uncertain, is described as darker skinned) to the unhinged marketing and crass brand tie-ins.Nevertheless, I was still excited to see it. So why did I leave the cinema not only bored, but feeling a little bit sad? Fennell said she wanted to make the film she imagined at 14, the age at which many of us read the novel in English class. Fennell focuses almost entirely on the “love story” at the expense of almost all of the novel’s other themes. Of course, if you’re a teenager in love, the doomed connection between Cathy and Heathcliff does captivate, although as an abuser who hangs a dog, Heathcliff is not exactly fanciable. I do understand the impulse behind Fennell’s fan-fictiony desire to have them consummate their love, when Brontë, who probably never touched a man her entire life, left all that desire unrealised. Horniness at the expense of all else, however, can feel terribly hollow. (...)Ultimately, the film was an act of cynical co-option by someone who didn’t understand the molten core of this novel and its groundbreaking approach to class, race and gender, or chose not to. And that’s why it made me feel so bored, and sad.
Which, of course, is true. The novel is all about that. But not only that. There are many Wuthering Heights in Wuthering Heights and what happens is that yours is not Emerald Fennell's.
Amber Barry, a PhD researcher in Victorian literature at King’s College London, says: “The Yorkshire moors illuminate Cathy and Heathcliff’s story particularly within the context of working-class demonstrations at the time. Can we call this Wuthering Heights if such a crucial setting is reduced to a flat, vaguely gothic backdrop?”As a Bradford-born actor, I have experienced barriers in the arts first-hand, and I believe casting choices such as Fennell’s preserve a system that undervalues northern women. Of course, acting is a transformational craft – performers are expected to inhabit lives far removed from their own, myself included. But the issue is not that actors shouldn’t extend beyond their lived experience. The question is far broader: when a major production depicts a didactic novel steeped in landscape, dialect and cultural identity, why should those from that region be denied such life-changing opportunities? It’s not about choosing between A-listers and regionally authentic actors, it’s about asking why so few actors from Bradford have ever reached the visibility necessary to be considered at all.
With this hyper-stylized and hyper-sexualized interpretation of the literary classic, Fennell has said that she “wanted to make something that was the book that I experienced when I was 14.” Davies was intrigued as soon as she read the script. “When I read her stage directions, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe she wants to do this! How am I going to do it?’” Davies’ second project with Fennell, after Saltburn, has been “one of the most exciting experiences as a production designer. There were so many unusual yet wondrous ideas on every page, from the dollhouse to the skin room [Catherine’s bedroom]. I felt immensely privileged that we were going to try to create that subconscious vision that everyone has when they read a book or listen to a story. Everyone has their own visuals in their mind, but very rarely do you get the opportunity to bring that to life.” (...)That top shot when Heathcliff goes to see Catherine after she dies is beautifully shot, as he lumbers up that rectangular staircase to her bedroom. What does that symbolize?We nearly didn’t do those stairs. I could’ve gone with a Regency or Georgian-shaped staircase; a spiral might’ve been the obvious choice. But in this case, necessity being the mother of invention, I had one space where I could build that staircase, and I wanted to fill it as much as possible. The rectangular staircase is really unusual and makes you feel uneasy. It’s a white marble staircase with red fur hanging from the bottom to give it different textures. He slowly goes up those stairs to find Cathy dead — the power of that scene. As [Cinematographer] Linus [Sandgren] and Emerald held that shot, you hold your breath until you can’t hold it anymore. As he walks into the light at the end of the bedroom, up those stairs, that’s such a powerful moment. (Su Fang Tham)
Glamour thinks that period dramas don't need period costumes – and “Wuthering Heights” is the proof.
Nelly is not a canonically queer character, and though she used queer content for shock value in Saltburn, Fennell shies away from most queer subtext in Wuthering Heights, with exceptions like a sapphic crush disappointingly framed as a jokey signifier of mental instability. But while not explicitly queer, Nelly is in a marginalized position as a servant and an unmarried woman. (In the novel, she’s sometimes called “Mrs. Dean,” but this appears to be simply an honorific; no husband is ever seen.) Though she’s surrounded by people desperately trying to negotiate marriages like business transactions, Nelly doesn't have the option to marry up, and her class status informs her view of the people and dynamics around her. (Megan Burbank)
Infobae (Argentina) thinks that the film is an (intolerable) fiftyshadesofgreyfication of Wuthering Heights. Also on Infobae, Wuthering Heights (the novel) is among Amazon Mexico's best-sellers.
The soundtrack is an exercise in experimentation for the artist, to which she is lyrically attached above all. For long-time fans of the British artist, Wuthering Heights is a great body of work that sees her return to her earliest sound but incorporating everything she’s learned over the years and her expansive, ever-changing career. Charli reminds us again that she’s an incredible lyricist and producer, that she knows what she wants to sound and look like, and the worlds she’d like to inhabit and explore through music and art. (Toni Casal in Metal)
Overall, “Wuthering Heights” is a bold and compelling addition to xcx’s discography, highlighting her growth as an artist. From haunting lyrics to high-energy instrumentals, xcx demonstrates her versatility, blending her signature pop sound with a darker, more cinematic edge. The album makes the perfect soundtrack for the film, immersing listeners in the passion, obsession and heartbreak of the story. (Lexi Bunting in Indiana Daily Student)
But at least since Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, the prospect of musically reimagining the story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff – if you want to reduce it to that – must have been all too daunting. Not for Charli XCX, who, after reading Emerald Fennell’s screenplay and being asked to contribute an original song for her inevitably steamy adaptation, decided to do a full album – not a soundtrack, certainly not a score dotted with a couple of pop songs, but a conceptual record attempting to match the infernal yearning Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi arguably bring to the screen. It does – makes it more convincing, even – but the album is so front-loaded it eventually stops sounding like a passion project, which is worse than having it tumble into madness. (Konstantinos Pappis in Our Culture)
Wuthering Heights was directly inspired by the film of the same name, and I applaud Charli XCX for taking a leap of faith here by stretching her creative muscles into uncharted waters for her. I really enjoyed the majority of this album, but the last few songs were a bit too “samey” to fully realize her vision for this record. The best news from this record is that Charli XCX has rekindled her creativity and seems poised for another big breakout when she drops her next LP. (Adam Grundy in Chrous.fm)
The album that could’ve been is spelled out there: one that, like the most feverish and unrelenting of love, tortures and tears you open in delight, challenges you and takes you out of yourself, leaving you open, lacerated, raw, and dripping like a wound. Yet so many of Wuthering Heights’s songs feel too easy, especially for Charli XCX of all people. Love is a dangerous game, after all, but here you can’t help feeling Charli is playing it safe. (Lydia Wei in Paste)
Infobae recommends The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
